Daily Digest 10/20 - The American Economy Is Rigged, U.S. Treasury Sells First Ever 2-Month Bill

Economy

Wealth is even less equally distributed, with just three Americans having as much as the bottom 50 percent—testimony to how much money there is at the top and how little there is at the bottom. Families in the bottom 50 percent hardly have the cash reserves to meet an emergency. Newspapers are replete with stories of those for whom the breakdown of a car or an illness starts a downward spiral from which they never recover.

Major investors are also starting to warn about the lending products and their associated weak lending standards. In a presentation in London attended by Business Insider last week, Anton Pil, head of J.P. Morgan’s $US100 billion alternatives investment arm, noted that private credit markets had “exploded in size” over recent years.

So what did today's first ever 2-Month auction reveal? Well, with the The WI trading at 2.170% for the 8-week bill, the inaugural $25BN auction priced on the screws, with a high yield of 2.17% (while also selling $40BN in 4 week bills) .

While the case in Boston federal district court centers on whether Harvard’s admissions process hurts Asian-American applicants, it has also highlighted the advantages enjoyed primarily by white applicants. And the trial has offered a rare glimpse into how wealth and longstanding connections, sometimes built over generations, play into admissions at the country’s oldest and richest university, known for educating presidents and power players.

The ANC has sought to reassure people inside and outside the country that its efforts to ensure the majority of black South Africans have better access to land - a long-standing party promise - will be legal and should not be cause for alarm. Ramaphosa has said everyone should “relax” about the land reform process and that it would “end up very well.”

“The fake opposition domestically wants to make a case of this ridiculous outrage having said nothing for years about the US helping to destroy Yemen, you know, about the famine. This is one journalist. It is sad. There are millions of people under famine now because of the regime links between the US and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And this goes back decades. It’s completely bipartisan,” he observed.

"I encourage parents to seek medical care right away if you or your child develop sudden weakness or loss of muscle tone in the arms or legs," Messonnier said. Symptoms include drooping face and eyelids, difficulty with eye movement and swallowing, and slurred speech. In severe cases, children might have trouble breathing and need a ventilator because of muscle weakness.

So far in this fiscal year, which just started on October 1, the US gross national debt – the total debt issued by the US government – has jumped by $138 billion in just 11 business days, fueled by a stupendous spending binge and big-fat tax cuts, to a breath-taking $21.654 trillion, after having jumped $1.27 trillion in fiscal 2018. And these are the good times!

One member of the caravan, Henry Tejeda, told the AP he left his wife and four children to join the group due to increasing violence in Honduras, where he said his mother was murdered four years ago and his brother was shot.

"I am carrying the documents to prove I'm not lying," Tejeda said. "I want to seek political asylum [in the U.S.] and help my family."

The 2018-2020 risk for most asset classes, such as stocks, bonds, corporate debt, and real estate is high while the potential reward in those asset classes is low. Gold and silver are opposite. Their long-term risk is low (September 2018) and their long-term potential reward is huge.

The catalog is worth viewing in its entirety for the sheer wealth (sorry) of breathtaking pieces up for sale: 19th century gold-and-enamel German snuffboxes, Ancient Etruscan-style Greek wine cups (sold for £4,375) and the complete poetic works of John Keats bound in gilded leather are all beautiful enough to make any patron of the arts feel weak in the knees.

The IMF says that China’s GDP growth could slow from 6.6 percent this year to just 6.2 percent in 2019, although the risks are skewed to the downside because of the trade war. The Fund said that a worst-case scenario in which the U.S. slaps stiff tariffs on nearly all imports from China would shave off 1.6 percentage points from Chinese growth.

Global consumers now use a million plastic bottles every minute, 91 percent of which are not recycled. Our growing consumption of single-use plastic is evident in the form of ever-expanding landfills, as well as pollution on our sidewalks, along roadways and in natural ecosystems. Plastic that is littered or blown out of waste bins makes its way into storm drains, streams and rivers. Ultimately, up to 8 million metric tons of it enter the world’s oceansevery year.

Obviously, the causes of geopolitical tension and conflict are complex, but as the new report makes clear, we shouldn’t underestimate the role that water is going to play in the future. Competition for dwindling water resources, the authors say, will exacerbate tensions on a global scale in the coming decades, with certain regions more vulnerable than others. But how are the various factors that influence water demand and availability likely to affect populations around the world?

"We can no longer manage wildlife and forests separately," he says. "Typically, state governments regulate animals and the federal government regulates the forests or vegetation."

According to the study, which included samples, photography and other data taken from a sample site within the Pando, the forest started to thin out about 40 to 50 years ago. Around that time, Rogers says populations of elk started to grow around the area.

But as the ice pack melts and retreats earlier in the year, more and more bears are forced to spend the summer on land. In North America, this has even led to the appearance of “grolars” and “pizzlies,” hybrids born of mating between polar bears and grizzlies.

Gold & Silver

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Many of the bedraggled travelers of the caravan ... say they are fleeing a toxic mix of violence, poverty and endemic corruption and would not turn back.

Crossing the Suchiate River between Guatamala and Mexico.

Young woman wearing flip-flops rests while waiting to get across a blocked bridge. How will this foot wear hold up on the remaining 1,600 miles they plan to hike?

Keeping your kids hydrated during the trip.

The 3E's offer a framework to look at what drives these processes. Severe overpopulation and resource depletion stress thousands and millions of normal people. Stressed people devolve into more primitive social structures (with less conscious cooperation, goodwill and mutual respect) into more predatory relationships.

Finally it is enough to start out on a 1,600 mile hike carrying their children in their arms and a few clothes in a Hello Kitty backpack.

The human distress is immense. And it promises to grow. This is very painful to look at.

How many migrant families would I welcome into my own home? (I have a spare bedroom and space on the lawn where immigrants could camp in tents.) Would I welcome yard-campers into my house to use the toilets and showers? Would I provide food, shelter, blankets and medical care when needed? Would I feel comfortable for my families safety leaving home with many strangers coming in and out of my home to use the bathrooms? (No) Would my capacity to feel compassion and give generously of my supplies to fellow human beings be depleted by the weight of 20-30 people camping in my yard? (Yes, it would.)

By taking in migrants to my own home and yard I would move my own life closer to the collapse point.

WE can’t personally take immigrants into our homes and support them financially, but the government can and should. After all, the .gov can print money!

Crowder prank called churches advocating more immigration pretending to be from an agency needing to place newly arrived refugees. He tried to get them to personally take one or more needy souls, but they refused. Maybe their hearts aren’t really in it. They’re just virtue signaling and determined to push all the costs and problems onto some unknown suckers.

My parents took in a migrant family while we were kids, letting them stay in the top floor of the rented house we were in, and feeding them and teaching them English.

We didn't move any closer to collapse; and we were among the poorest of those who worked with my father. That was perhaps 1981, and my phD physicist father was making perhaps $18,000 and paying on his student loans.

And I don't know, but I don't think there was government help. It was worked out with the church, though, so who knows.

I don't think it will...but if the fall of the Roman Empire rhymes with our current situation, then before all is said and done you may be thankful to journey out with them as they come through; because there is little left, and what there is will be taken by the wealthy of your community through excessive taxes. So you'll just join the bands, and move through the empire, eating and moving and eating, and completely destroying the infrastructure upon which America's nobility depends.

Hopefully we haven't fallen as far as the Roman fall to the vandals, though.

Blech. Don't let it get to that point. Decide what you CAN help with, and help that way. If you can take in one, take in one. And don't turn to the government for help . For every dollar you get, you'll lose ten.